In the telecommunications industry, broadband RF signals are delivered to consumers via conductors from a head end located, for example, at the central office of a CATV telecommunications company. At the head end, a variety of RF circuit modules are typically mounted in racks of specially designed chassis components. The RF modules carry out the many kinds of RF signal modifications and manipulations necessary to operate a telecommunications system, such as a CATV system. Many different types of RF circuit modules and chassis for supporting, connecting and managing the cables associated with the modules are known in the telecommunications industry.
A few examples of RF circuit modules and supporting chassis components are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,903,829; 5,909,155; 5,955,930; 5,966,648; 6,046,913; 6,049,709; 6,102,214; 6,144,561; 6,195,493; and 6,289,210. The versatility and flexibility of many of these prior art modules and chassis systems are limited by the number and type of modules that can be installed in the chassis, by the cable management components mounted to the chassis and by the connectibility of the various RF modules to each other and to the chassis components. For instance, many of the prior art chassis components are not capable of accepting both active RF modules (amplifiers, power supplies, RF detector switches), as well as passive RF modules (splitters, combiners, attenuators, equalizers, filters). Many prior art RF modules are provided with one type of cable connector and one form of cable management component.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an integrated and flexible RF management system that is particularly suited for use in CATV head end environments and that can be configured and reconfigured in a number of ways depending on the requirements of the CATV operator. There is also a need for versatile rack-mounted chassis components for the vertical and horizontal mounting of active (powered) and passive (unpowered) RF circuit modules with different cable connectors and different cable management solutions.